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7 thoughts on “The Myth Of Passive Income”

I don’t know what sort of return you require but I have invested in a number of dividend producing stocks over more than 20 years and at least for my purposes the returns have hardly been sub-standard. Investments in MO, PM and MCD to mention several have provided very nice returns over the years.

Adrian, is this an absolute, or more of a warning to people who might be depending on a simple formula (“if I have $X invested, each year it’ll generate $Y, and I’ll never have to work again!”) in place of more informed planning?

I do like the idea of being active (chasing after your dreams and making them happen) as opposed to passive (waiting for good things to fall into our laps). Active implies more control on our part, passive implies that we’re depending on factors outside of our control (to some degree).

@ Tim – Specifically-selected ‘dividend stocks’ need not be sub-standard, but – as a group – they are … simply on the basis that you are artificially selecting stocks on just one component of their measured returns.

@ Milton – I would like to be just as hands off in my retirement years as the next guy, but it’s just an unfortunate fact of life: true ‘passive’ investments have virtually no place in my pre- and post-retirement investment strategies.